


Happy birthday Sou :) ! / Tumblr Prompts

by Akira14



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-17 13:37:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2311511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akira14/pseuds/Akira14
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here's the collection of what I've written for Sousuke's birthday, answering to prompt sent through ask on my RP blog and on my main account. </p><p>Chapter 1: SouMako, tickling<br/>Chapter 2: SouMako, butterfly kisses<br/>Chapter 3: SouMako, secrets<br/>Chapter 4: SouRin, my headcanons with Rin as an athlete and Sou as a sports journalist<br/>Chapter 5: SouRei, Rei goes and visit Sousuke after the relay at regionals<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Come and leave me some prompts at revengeisalwaysanoption.tumblr.com ;) !

He’s gonna kill Rin. He’s gonna kill him and it’s gonna suffer, but he will deserve it. 

Because you don’t just go and reveal to your best friend’s flatmate about his greatest weakness. Especially when you do know about his feelings for said person… Yes, Rin has known about that ever since he came over months ago, but Sousuke guesses it hasn’t been really a surprise to his friend. After all, how could someone live with Tachibana and not fall in love with him?

And Sousuke would have been more than happy to keep those feelings to himself, to live through another unrequited love story, but no. Rin had to go and give up his secret. So now he can’t go through one day without being cornered by Makoto… and tickled until he is red in the face, wheezing and with tears at the corner of his eyes.  
Having him so close, everyday, and not being able to do anything about it - because really, this big guy is pretty easy to scare and that’s the last thing Sousuke wants… to have Makoto being afraid of him - it’s just… Well, let’s say it takes him every ounce of his willpower not to give in to his instincts and kiss him.  
And killing Rin won’t make it any easier, but at least he would relieve some of his pent up frustration, wouldn’t he?

"You should laugh more often, Sousuke-kun." He says, unexpectedly. Usually Makoto stealthy approaches him when he’s least expecting it, attacks and then leaves without a word, though his amusement his palpable and shown by a devious smirk on his lips.  
Not today, however. Not on his birthday.  
"It is really an amazing sound, the one of your laugh. " There’s no smirk, or smile, upon his lips now. He’s being so serious about it, that Sousuke cannot cut him off despite being embarassed by that unexpected and silly comment about his own laugh. "I wish I could hear it everyday, and without having to resort to tickling."

Screw restraint. He cannot have those gentle eyes upon him, saying those kind of things, and not dive in for a kiss.  
Not at all gentle or innocent, as he shoves him roughly against the wall and bites at bottom lip, barely surpressing a moan when Makoto licks into his mouth. It’s not a good kiss by far, too eager and messy, but nonetheless it leaves them breathless and flushing when they have to come up for air.

Makoto, indeed, looks so disheleved with his mouth open and untidy hair and flushed cheeks… that it has Sousuke laughing fondly at the sight.  
"Tha…" He tries to speak, through his panting, and Sousuke has just to kiss him again. Lightly this time, just pecking him on the lips. "That’s what I was talking about. Happy birthday, Sousuke."


	2. Chapter 2

He wakes up to a deep voice, still raspy from the all the moaning and screaming of the previous night, whispering birthday wishes in his ear.  
To the soft and almost impercettible touch of his eyelids on his forehead, down the bridge of his nose and on his mouth.  
To chapped lips, retracing the same path, just barely brushing against his skin. He tries to sit up, to reciprocate, but he is kept down on a mattress by a surprisingly strong grip. His lover doesn’t want to be interrupted, or distracted, now.

"Let me, Sou-kun." He hears Makoto say, and it has him groaning. "Let me worship you."  
He wakes up feeling the luckiest man on earth, and probably he is.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Makoto trying to hide something from Sousuke (a bday present) and they wind up wrestling a little. Makoto accidentally tickles him and then IT'S ON because× Sousuke is super ticklish and at least he forgot about the present afterwards

Makoto is hiding something, and he doesn’t like it one bit. He’s not even that good about being secretive, so why can’t he just give up and come clean about it?  
"I won’t get mad." He states, looking at his boyfriend straight in the eyes before getting up from the table. He’s not that hungry, anyway, and seeing that Makoto has tried to cook all of his favorite food for breakfast (and some of it was actually edible) makes his inside quench with fear.  
What was that for? Makoto would never try to resort to such cheap tricks to ask forgivness. He shouldn’t have to.  
"Huh?" Makoto keeps feigning ignorance and well, that does make him a little mad.  
"About what you’re hiding from me." He clarifies, dropping the dishes in the sink with way more force than necessary.  
"Sousuke… It’s nothing, really."

So he does admit there’s something he’s not telling Sousuke. That’s a step in the right direction, and the next is pretending that he doesn’t give a damn about it, so that the tension between them remains and Makoto would feel the need to make it go away.  
"Whatever." He shrugged, and walked out for the kitchen. As expected, Makoto ran after him and stopped him by grasping at his wrist.  
"Wait!" Makoto pleaded, and Sousuke knew he had won. "It’s… It’s about today."  
"What about it?" It didn’t make sense, but then again Sousuke had been so busy studying lately that he honestly didn’t know what day it was today. Was it their anniversary, or something? Oh damn, did he forgot about an imporant event and this was Makoto’s typical way of letting him know that he wasn’t upset about it, really, but it would be nice if he did some effort and tried to recall why it was an important day for them?

Before he could reach for his phone and check the date, however, Makoto provided him with the answer.  
"Well, it’s the 14th of September… Your birthday, remember?"  
Ah. So he was a year older today. Hardly something to celebrate, wasn’t it?  
He tried to free himself from the tight hold Tachibana had on him, and it resulted in a tug that made them both fall on the floor. And still, Makoto wasn’t letting him go. His hands had fallen down on his hips, now, and his fingertips were almost… defintely… make him burst out laughing.

"No… " He spoke, with some difficulty, as× Makoto relentessly went for each any every one of his weak spots - the armpits, of course, but then also the nape, the neck, the spine and the inside of his thighs - "… no tickling, that’s not fair!"  
"Wait is not fair is you not listening to me, Sou-kun! No present for you, if you keep sulking about not being told what it is!" Makoto pouted, and looked so adorable that× Sousuke had to reach for his nape and steal a quick kiss.  
"Hardly any present could rival with what I have right on top of me." He said, in what was hopefully a suggestive manner.  
"Is that so?" The other man retorted, purposefully grinding his clothed erection against Sousuke’s.

Yeah, he was pretty sure about that. And he just was gonna show his boyfriend how much he appreciated having him here, in his arms and above him… how he didn’t really need anything else, right now.  
Makoto wouldn’t be able to sit without wincing for a week, probably, but it was worth it.  
So, so worth it.


	4. Flawed designs

It’s not easy, it has never been. That’s okay, though, that’s how life is and he has long accepted that. He has accepted that there are other ways to realize his dreams, that he can be beside Rin even though he cannot swim at a professional level anymore.  
It took some detours, it took more than a couple of wrong choices. It took countless nights in which he couldn’t sleep and mornings spent heaving his soul out, until all he could throw up was spit and bile.

Endless phone talks to Rin, never mentioning the anxiety that was devouring him - ‘talking about it will only make it worse’, his doctor had said - but knowing his boyfriend could feel that something was wrong, anyway. Thankfully he never asked about it, he never pried for details, to know exactly the why and the how… Sousuke wouldn’t have known what to say. He let him talk about inane matter first, then eased him in conversations about his future so effortlessly that Sousuke found his resolve little by little.  
He knew that he wouldn’t be happy studying business&management, with the only perspective of ending up to work for his father’s firm.  
So he gave med school a try, thinking that maybe he could become someone that could prevent young athletes from doing the same mistake he did.   
Despite his best intentions, though, that didn’t work out either.

Ads by OffersWizard×"Writing makes you feel relaxed, doesn’t it?" Rin suggested. Well, yeah, but he needed to be practical about his future. Writing was just a hobby, something that he had been prompted to do by his therapist.   
Nevertheless, it was worth a try. He dropped out of med school, and enrolled to a journalism and communication one. And when they asked to cover a swimming sport event, for the school newspaper, he knew he had finally found his call.  
He was going to make it big, to write the best articles that anyone has ever read on the matter. Even if the matter was just prefecturals in a city in the middle of nowhere. He would write pieces that were both technical and poetical, reaching out also to readers that weren’t too familiar with swimming. He would make them all wish to attend these events themselves, so that they could witness with their eyes a sight that words could barely deliver.

And when he finally would on top, when he would be working for someone was willing to send him to interview the national swimming team despite his relative inexperience… Then his goal would be to make them all fall in love with× Matsuoka. Not such a hard task, was it?

"Yamazaki! What the hell is this? I sent you to write a report of a 800m medley relay, not to wax lyricals about Matsuoka alone, who, according to your piece ‘has shown us a sight that we have never seen before’ !"

He shares a look with× Nitori, his proofreader, who just shrugs and keeps on working. He’s fucking good at his job, that one. He pratically rewrites the half assed pieces of craps his collegues hand out to him. Pretty much all of them, except for Sousuke who takes the job seriously even though they are are working for a small local newspaper.

It can’t be helped, really.  
Some people needed to be educated, needed to see with their own eyes, before understanding what a relay is all about. Sousuke, of all people, should know.

"We are gonna be there, Yamazaki-senpai. We are gonna be in the press conference room, in 2020, and be the first who ask Rin-senpai who it feels to win a gold metal in his own country." He says, as if× Sousuke needs to to be reassured just because his first draft has been rejected.  
He knows that. He has doubted it, in his darkest days, but now he is gonna stay positive.

It’s not easy, it is never gonna be. That doesn’t mean he should give up, right?  
He’s gonna be standing on the same stage as Rin, at the Olympics, even though they would cover two very different roles.

"I know you both will, but don’t you try to keep him here on his birthday." Rin says, walking into their office. "Work can wait."

He’s almost tempted to say that it can’t, but when he sees the leery grin on his face, and hears× Nitori groan.  
"Get a room, you two."

Well, that’s exactly what he plans to do.


	5. Chapter 5

"You can’t quit, Yamazaki-senpai.” He says, as soon as Sousuke opens the door. Rei doesn’t give him the time to say that Rin isn’t there, or to ask him how did he find out about his intentions.

He just steps in, and drops the stack of books and pages printed off the Internet down on the nearest desk. It would be pretty useless to linger on that particular detail, anyway.  
He found out through Rin, of course, who was looking way too crushed for someone who just had an amazing race with Haruka-senpai and came first in both his butterfly and crawl solo events. Rin didn’t even have to speak, all it took was one was meeting his gaze and Rei _knew_. He was suddenly brought back to that day, at regionals, when someone else has overheard _that_ news.  
And well, if he saved the day - and Rin, as well - back then, he can save it again.

"It’s none of your business, Ryuugazaki." He says, and yet he doesn’t ask him to leave. "It is. I want to swim with you again, even if it won’t be in an official event. I want our match to be on even grounds… I… **We** both know that you would have been way faster than me, if only your shoulder wasn’t hurting.” Why this guy can’t just hear him out? Why does he have to be as stubborn as his roommate?

"I don’t do things for somebody else’s sake. Not even for Rin’s." Sousuke scoffs, instictively shrugging his shoulders and then immediately regretting it when he feels a pang of pain that has him groaning and wincing.

"Here." Rei promptly offers the ice-spray that he had brought with him in his backpack. He turns his head, not wanting him to think that he’s staring at his shoulder - but he _is_ , ‘cause it is still in such a bad shape (all swollen and bruised) that is kinda hard not to - and starts speaking again.

"Then do it for yourself. You may think you don’t have a choice, but my research can prove the opposite. No, don’t interrupt me." He puts a hand on his mouth, turning red when he realizes what he just did. His gesture, however, has had the desired effect. An intrigued Sousuke is actually hearing him out.

"I know what you’re just thinking right now: ‘this guy has looked up swimmer’s shoulder on Google and now he thinks he’s such an expert’. I’m not: naturally you would know better than me, but for all the negative outcomes that you read about there are also the positive ones that you cannot just ignore. I’ve personally chosen the best research reviews, and the most helpful books you could ever find in a library. I wanted to bring you some data on recoveries, numbers that would prove to you that you **can** compete again, but… I’m still working on it.”

Sousuke honestly doesn’t know what to say. He gets what Ryuugazaki is trying to say, he appreciates the boy’s attempt to give him another perspective on the matter, but it’s just a little too hard to be optmistic when your shoulder just won’t heal. Still, he looks so persuaded that his hard figures and numbers can work a miracle that Sousuke doesn’t have it in him to crush his hopes. Besides, he’s too tired to.

"Can you please wait until then, to quit swimming for good?" Rei pleads, not caring about how silly and naive his request might sound.

"You know what, Ryuugazaki? I just might." Rei looks up, smiling and he is a little taken aback because Sousuke is smiling back.

Miracles still do happen, don’t they?

They just need one more.


End file.
